


Muddled Memories And Altered Time

by Subtle_Shenanigans



Series: Confused Chicken and Ashen Feathers [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Avianshifter, Best Friends, Chicken Boyo, Friendship, Gen, I honestly don't even know his nationality, Near the end at least, Okay more angst than I thought, Orphanage, Platonic Relationship, Shapeshifter, backstory?, inability to keep track of time, light angst?, like The Great War and Cartoons, maybe Welsh?, mentions of eating raw meat (just a fair warning), mentions of historical events, muddled memories, theres a word for it but I can't recall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-06-30 23:44:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15762177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Subtle_Shenanigans/pseuds/Subtle_Shenanigans
Summary: It's not that Jake is apathetic; it's that he's been around a really long time and he's only fifteen, really.





	Muddled Memories And Altered Time

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all wanted more and so I provide.
> 
> Honestly, I don't have much background for either of these characters or their world. But I guess we can all discover it together?
> 
> Also, any information about historical events or orphanages I only know from history class and entertainment sources.

_muddled memories and altered time,_

_begotten unto forgotten rhymes_

* * *

 

 

    Jake was a herdsboy, about two hundred years ago.

   (It was actually three, though he doesn't know that.)

   He doesn't remember much about that time; he knows sheep and their patterns like the feathers on his chest (which is sometimes more familiar to him than his flesh), remembers cold, balmy winds and rolling moors.

    But he can't tell you where he came from; not the land, nor his native tongue, nor his family name. He barely recalls an older man, unrelated, allowing him stay on his plot to care for his sheep, and a distant cousin who would come calling by on rare occasions.

    Jake's pretty sure his parents died long ago.

    But he doesn't feel a hollow ache over these people, left so far behind. He thinks, sometimes, that he _should_. But he just. . .doesn't.

    Herding sheep is his oldest memory; they look like grainy photos soaked in water.

        He must have left at some point - ( _or been forced to go_ ) - because it's a blur of flying and shifting; there's also the fifty years he spent stuck in his Chicken form, fluttering and _boking_ past farms and wood, outrunning the slavering jaws of hounds and savage claws of cats.

   (He's remembers the boat with clarity, though; rocking turned gentle swaying, that delved into furious slamming as the ocean's mood changed at the drop of a hat. Feathers soaked, salt-crusted, as he sat in the hold with other fowl that he can't even communicate with because they, _they_ are just birds, and the feed is low-

    He gets so hungry that he shifts into a hawk and slaughters them, taking his fill, mind hazy. His view of such a thing at the time was . . .much more horrified afterwards, though he didn't dwell on it. He was more grossed out that he ate raw, bloody meat rather than the fact that he ate chickens he had been spending upwards of two weeks with.

    He escapes out of the cage as a finch, shifts back into a boy(?), and hides out until they hit America.)

    It was probably sometime after that, after living as a human boy in the woods for who knows how long, that he finally rejoins civilization.

    The first thing he notices is how _different_ things are. He's filled with distant surprise (he's constantly distant, in a daze, fog clouding his mind) at the grand trains and their tracks. He somehow hitches a ride and hops off one starry night, where there's bogs and the air is warm and sweet, probably because it's summer-

    For the first time in many, many years, Jake is aware of what season it is.

    His legs tremble and buckle, and he sits on the grass, breathing getting heavier as his vision is obscured by tears, and-

    _Oh. I'm crying._

    Jake hasn't been this _present_  since his herdsboy days.

    He realizes that hasn't really been. . .alive.

     "I'm," his voice trembles, volume low. "I-" 

    He flexes his hands and looks at them, feeling the muscles move, feeling _his_ hands move.

    He's hyper-aware of everything; his breathing, the tears running down his face, his beating heart. He knew, logically, that he was alive with blood running through his veins and oxygen pulled into his lungs, but he had never really _felt_ it.

    Jake sobs as the fireflies begin to light, hugging himself tightly, while the fog clears from his head for the first time in well over one hundred years.

* * *

 

    It's probably after that, that he's picked up for the orphanage.

    Jake has lost time, once more, but the fog that constantly permeates his thoughts doesn't obscure his awareness anymore. Just his time.

    He was afraid at first, being in the first orphanage. He knows he hasn't aged (or, possibly, is aging very, _very_ slowly) in a very long time, and that he can't ignore the restless stirring in his heart to stretch wings. But he soon learns that it's not hard to hide in the rafters as a raven or crow, whenever someone comes into the room. Or as a parrot outside, surprisingly (maybe because his coloration looks more natural on one?) 

    And while yes, he's fifteen with some pudge still on his features, he realizes that most children keep such a look for up to four years.

    And it helps that they mistake him for thirteen, even if it's far off the mark.

    Ultimately, he's glad to stay there for a few years, as The Great War comes and goes. By time the main fighting has stopped, though, he decided to run, slipping out the window one night as a bright yellow-green burrowing owl.

    He's pretty sure one of his many roommates saw, but he feels unconcerned.

* * *

 

   Honestly, time slips past pretty fast after that, but he remembers it all fairly well.

    Every orphanage after, he leaves by the next night; out the window as a nocturnal bird. There's a sort of joy as man finds a way to fly, quiant airplanes becoming more complex and efficient. He watches with amused wonderment as cartoons arrive, rapidly changing and growing into something more (he finds himself partial to Tom & Jerry after all these years); more wars come and go, though he hides in wilderness to avoid the tension. He hears about the computer about ten years after its debut; listens to music change all around him, circling back and becoming something new and exciting but reminiscent of its predecessors. 

    Food changes, strangely but interestingly, as does literature and entertainment. People change their styles, their speech - language itself like a painting with more and more layers, some colors covering up old ones, or changing the shape of the picture.

    And sometimes-

it's going too fast, too much, for him to keep up; he has to keep getting new clothes and changing the way he talks, until whatever semblance of a recognizable accent he had is turned into a shambles mess of odd pronunciation. His hair is odd for many, many years, and it's hard to earn money or find people who will donate stuff to him, because he doesn't want to steal, and people keep trying to shove him back into orphanages and schools-

   But he learns, enunciates his dazed state so people think he's just absent-minded, a dreamer, a ditz, less intelligent, even if he's not really any of these things-

   And then, eventually, time stops.

* * *

 

    Her hair is black and sooty, like it's made of ash, with gold strips that can't possibly be any sort of dye.

    Her eyes are gray.

    Jake can't stop watching her with a strange intensity, like he just _knows_.

    It's not a crush, he's sure, nor even an attraction for companionship. It's more like some sort of scanner setting off an alarm.

    It dispels the fog completely.

    And, after meeting her for the first time, he begins to age.

* * *

 

     Jake learns her name is Zero.

     Well, it's more of a nickname, one that she gave herself. She won't tell him her real name (if she has one). 

     He knows she is one year older than him (sort of), and that she lives a relatively normal life with her family, though she doesn't really have any friends.

    He also learns, on the first day they meet, that's she's a Darkbird - something similar to the concept of a phoneix.

    . . .well, they _both_ sort of learn that on the first day they meet, because there's an incident, and she falls, spine breaking and ribs cracking, and the man who pushed her runs, so he stays to help, and she-

    She gasps, eyes opening, and all her veins glow; she is burning beneath him, heat coming off of her like it does a campfire.

    They stay there in the late hours, deciding what to do. Jake is more there by happenstance, anyways, so he just waits for her to make a choice. Zero eventually shakes herself out of a shocked stupor, and asks him who _he_ is, what he's doing here, why is his hair that color, and his accent so strange-

    And Jake?

    Jake, who is at a loss for words, makes himself talk.

      And he talks more than he ever has for the last two hundred and ninety years, at least; shadows draw around them in the abandoned construction site, and the only light to remain is sunlight that's given way to distant starlight.

    They stay until dawn, well after he has finished, and she takes time to decide what to do - _she_ is at a crossroads after all, her life a jumbled mess, and now that man surely after her.

    In the end, they decide to run.

    Together.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, wow. This went sorta weird. *shrug*


End file.
